What is the monster on the bell tower of Notre Dame?

When I was young, because of the movie "Notre Dame de Paris", I knew that there was a Notre Dame de Paris in France, that there was such a beautiful woman in the world, Esmeralda, and that there was such an ugly but incomparably kind bell ringer Quasimodo in the world. Since then, Notre Dame de Paris has become a holy place that I want to worship in my heart.

Notre Dame de Paris/Arthur photography

The Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris is the cathedral building of the Archdiocese of Paris, located in the heart of Paris, on the Ile de la Cité diocese. Notre Dame was built in 1163 in the Gothic architectural form, and the entire church was completed in 1345, which lasted more than 180 years. Notre Dame de Paris is a symbol of ancient Paris, the original French name of Notre Dame", which originally meant "our lady", which refers to the mother of Jesus, The Virgin Mary.

The famous French writer Victor Hugo's novel "Notre Dame de Paris" has made the most poetic depiction of Notre Dame. The novel was written in the Romantic era of French literature. The novel caused a huge response when it was published in 1831, and many people wanted to renovate the then dilapidated Notre Dame Cathedral and launched a fundraising program. It also aroused the attention of the government authorities at the time to the tragic situation of notre dame's architecture. Restoration plans began in 1844 and lasted 23 years, with the restoration of the spire and the sacristy, so the Notre Dame Cathedral we see today is what it looked like after that renovation.

The main entrance of Notre Dame Cathedral. In the middle is the Gate of Judgment of the Last Days, and on the girder in the center of the lintel is the scene of Jesus making the final judgment and measuring the character of the world. On the left is the Porta Santa Maria and on the right is the oldest Gate of Santa Ana. In the center of the lintel is a diagram of the Virgin Devotion, showing the solemnity of the Romanesque style.

Today, Notre-Dame is still a masterpiece of French Gothic architecture and has almost maintained its original original appearance. On the north side of Notre Dame de Paris there is a small door that is not very noticeable, and entering the small door along the narrow spiral staircase leads to the fantastic monster corridor 46 meters above the ground, which is named because there are many monster statues in the corners of the railing, these fantasy birds and beasts created by Ore-le-Duque, hybrid animals and legendary monsters, perched in pairs on the bell tower of Notre Dame, the most famous of which is "stryge", who looks thoughtfully at Paris. Sit back and watch the world's objects change for stars. The word Stryge originated in Greece and originally meant "Night Owl", a legendary night elf in the Middle East.

These monsters have hideous faces, bat wings and tails, and have a demonic posture, and people put them in the doorway to ward off evil spirits. Legend has it that necromancers pour life into these statues to make them move, they have hard skin like stone, knives and guns, and their weakness is fear of light. In the end, this monster has completely lost its original practical and religious value and becomes a pure ornament. I saw that the monsters in the illusory world composed of many gods and demons looked strange and cold, looking down at the misty city under their feet. They squatted here quietly for hundreds of years, as if pondering the fate of the parisians at their feet.

Hugo once said in the preface to Notre Dame de Paris that a few years ago, while visiting her, he found the handwritten inscription on the wall in the dark corner of a spire bell tower: ANARKH. These capital Greek letters, eroded by the years, black and dull, deeply embedded in the stone, these indelible symbols, especially the fate and tragic meaning they contain, deeply shocked his soul.

He wondered who this suffering soul was, and he had to leave this mark of sin, or the mark of this calamity, on the forehead of this ancient church, or he would not leave the world. After the visit, the wall was painted and scraped, and the mysterious handwriting engraved on the dark bell tower of Notre Dame was also lost, and now it is gone, and the unknown fate summarized by its tear-jerking has disappeared. The people who wrote on the wall, along with the words, disappeared from the human world.?

At that time, there was an open-air café in front of Notre Dame, where Hugo drank kung fu coffee, and the taste was strong, sitting until the sunset ended, watching the colors of the sunset evenly smear on the white stone walls of Notre Dame. What kind of invisible state of mind did Hugo have at that time, wandering under the huge shadow of the front wall of Notre Dame day and night, listening to the melodious bells from the bell tower, gently stroking the stone that was about to be carved by time, the mysterious words on the bell tower could not help but jump into his mind, and a lofty and painful feeling slowly rose in his heart, and began to conceive a magnificent story.

"On Grave Square, the beautiful and kind gypsy tramp Esmeralda danced, followed by the beautiful and clever Gary; the ugly and deformed body of Quasimodo, the bell-striking man, bounced back and forth on the bell tower, emitting a monster-like roar; the priest's gloomy shadow ghostly, thick and wet, flashing in the courtyard wall on the top floor of the bell tower through a black coat...?" Thus was born Hugo's famous book "Notre Dame de Paris".

Esmeralda is the ideal character created by Hugo, a symbol of the beauty of human nature. She is pure and kind, loves freedom, is passionate and bold, and has a strong character. Quasimodo is the embodiment of Hugo's ideal of "goodness", a character created by Hugo according to the principle of beauty and ugliness. He was ugly in appearance – with an extremely ugly appearance: a geometric face, a tetrahedral nose, a horseshoe-shaped mouth, jagged teeth, one-eyed, deaf, hunchbacked... It seems that God has befallen him with all misfortune and has been ridiculed, but he is noble in his heart and a man with a sense of justice and feelings. His admiration for Esmeralda is a tenderness mixed with gratitude, sympathy and respect, a selfless, eternal, noble and simple love, completely different from Claude's evil possessiveness and different from the playboy Phobis's play. Through this image, Hugo set up a model of the beauty of the human soul. This image also embodies the theory of the triumph of good over evil and the triumph of sincerity over hypocrisy.

The windows on the Champs Elysées, full of colors, convey fashion ideas from the forefront of the world, but it is not Paris; the quietly flowing Seine River, wordlessly witnessing the changes of history, it is not Paris; large and small, all over the streets of coffee houses, fragrance with French leisure, warmth and romance, it is not Paris. The real Paris has gone with the wind in the immortal bells of Notre Dame...

Descend from the north side door to the south side of the Bell Tower, the average visit time is 50 minutes. There is no bathroom inside, no elevator, and there are 400 steps in total.

There is a bell tower souvenir shop on the way up to the bell tower, if you like it, you can buy it quickly, otherwise you can't go back.

Because there are more people, the photograph should be clean and neat, and it cannot be stopped for a long time, otherwise it will affect the visit of the people behind.

Entrance to the church is free, while tickets are required to go to the Bell Tower.

If you like to visit the Paris Museum and have plenty of time, it is recommended to buy a Paris Museum visit ticket, I bought a 4-day museum ticket, what louvre ah, the major art galleries and museums can all be free to enter and exit, very convenient.

Lotto Travel Network and Lotto Inspiration Traveler: Arthur Released: 2016.07.05